Angelology(19)

of deference and discretion the Grigori family required. They tended to gather at his mother’s side,

inundating her with compliments and flattering her sense of noblesse oblige, ensuring that they would

be invited to the Grigori apartment the next afternoon.

If it were up to Percival, their lives would be kept private, but his mother could not endure being

alone. He suspected that she surrounded herself with amusement to stave off the terrible truth that

their kind had lost their place in the order of things. Their family had formed alliances generations

before and depended upon a network of friendships and relations to maintain their position and

prosperity. In the Old World, they were deeply, inextricably connected to their family’s history. In

New York, they had to re-create it everywhere they went.

Otterley, his younger sister, stood by the window, a dim light falling over her. Otterley was of

average height—six feet three inches—thin, and zipped into a low-cut dress, a bit much but in keeping

with her taste. She’d pulled her blond hair back into a severe chignon and had painted her lips a

bright pink that seemed a little too young for her. Otterley had been stunning once—even more lovely

than the Swiss model standing nearby—but had burned through her youth in a hundred-year spree of

parties and ill-suited relationships that had left her—and their fortune—significantly diminished.

Now she was middle-aged, well into her two-hundredth year, and despite her efforts to conceal it, her

skin had the appearance of a plastic mannequin’s. Try as she might, she couldn’t recapture the way

she had looked in the nineteenth century.

Seeing Percival, Otterley sauntered to his side, slid a long bare arm through his arm, and led him

into the crowd as if he were an invalid. Every man and woman in the room watched Otterley. If they

had not done business with his sister, they knew her from her work on various family boards or by the

incessant social calendar she maintained. Their friends and acquaintances were wary of his sister. No

one could afford to displease Otterley Grigori.

“And where have you been hiding?” Otterley asked Percival, narrowing her eyes in a reptilian

stare. She had been raised in London, where their father still resided, and her crisp British accent had

a particularly sharp sting when she became irritated.

“I doubt very much that you’re feeling lonely,” Percival said, glancing at the crowd.

“One is never alone with Mother,” Otterley replied, tart. “She makes these things more elaborate

each week.”

“She’s here somewhere, I assume?”

Otterley’s expression hardened in irritation. “Last I checked, she was receiving admirers at her

throne.”

They walked to the far end of the room, past a wall of French windows that seemed to invite one to

step through their thick, transparent depths and float out above the foggy, snow-laden city. Anakim,

the class of servants the Grigoris and all well-bred families kept, stepped in their path and cut away.

More champagne, sir? Madam? Dressed entirely in black, the Anakim were shorter and smaller-

boned than the class of beings they served. In addition to their black uniforms, his mother insisted that

they wear their wings exposed, to distinguish them from her guests. The difference in shape and span

was marked. Whereas the pure class of guests had muscular, feathered wings, the servants’ wings

were light as film, webs of gossamer tissue that appeared washed in sheets of gray opalescence.

Because of the wings’ structure—they resembled nothing so much as the wings of an insect—the

servants flew with precise, quick movements that allowed great accuracy. They had huge yellow

eyes, high cheekbones, and pale skin. Percival had witnessed a flight of Anakim during the Second

World War, when a swarm of servants had descended upon a caravan of humans fleeing the bombing

of London. The servants ripped the wretched people apart with ease. After this episode Percival

understood why the Anakim were believed to be capricious and unpredictable beings fit only to serve

their superiors.

Every few steps Percival recognized family friends and acquaintances, their crystal champagne

flutes catching the light. Conversations melted into the air, leaving the impression of one continual

velvety drone of gossip. He overheard talk of holidays and yachts and business ventures,

conversation that characterized his mother’s friends as much as the flash of diamonds and the

sparkling cruelty of their laughter. The guests looked upon him from every corner, taking in his shoes,

his watch, pausing to examine the cane and finally—seeing Otterley—realizing that the sick,